Samsung’s New Chips Could Bring Power To Everyone

Michael Moore joined TechWeek Europe in January 2014 as a trainee before graduating to Reporter later that year. He covers a wide range of topics, including but not limited to mobile devices, wearable tech, the Internet of Things, and financial technology.

Samsung is looking to upgrade the power of your smartphone with the launch of a new processor that will be able to bring premium features to low-cost devices.

The company has revealed the Exynos 7 Octa 7870, the newest member of its Exynos 7 family, which up until now has primarily been reserved for Samsung’s flagship devices.

The launch will also see the latest 14nm manufacturing technology come to the mid-range mass market for the first time, bringing large advantages in terms of processing power and efficiency to more phone than ever.

Power up

The Exynos 7 Octa 7870 comes with eight 1.6GHz processor cores, and will be able to support download speeds of up to 300MBps thanks to its integrated LTE modem.

Samsung says that it will also be able to support playback of 60fps full HD video, as well as 16MP images from smartphone cameras, and will consume over 30 percent less power than mobile SoCs built with the 28nm technology typically seen in similarly-riced devices.

The new Exynos chip is set to go into production in the first quarter of 2016, meaning that devices featuring the kit should begin appearing later this year.

“With increased performance and power efficiency, we anticipate widespread adoption of our new Exynos 7 Octa 7870 into mid-tier mobile devices,” said Ben K. Hur, Samsung’s vice president of system LSI marketing.

“Consumers will experience enhanced performance as this is the first time a mobile application processor built on advanced 14nm process is available for these types of smart mobile devices.”

Samsung’s most powerful chipset, the Exynos 8 Octa 8890, was revealed back in November, and should be powering the company’s next flagship device, the Galaxy S7, set to launch this weekend at Mobile World Congress.

The company has also revealed that it will be manufacturing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chipset alongside and using the same use its 14nm LPP (Low-Power Plus) process – the second generation of the company’s 14nm FinFET process technology, as its own Exynos processors.